Many of you might have already guessed it that the e-commerce giant Amazon has ventured into the flight booking space in India. With its partnership with Cleartrip, users can get additional cashback if they are booking flight tickets via Amazon. Another great feature provided for flight bookings is refunding on cancellation which provides booking flexibility. This is unlike the booking made from Cleartrip where customers are charged a cancellation fee.

In addition, Amazon is offering a special cashback of upto Rs. 2,000 as part of launch promo if you’re an Amazon prime user.

During the launch Shariq Plasticwala, Director of Amazon Pay quoted, “We’re delighted to add domestic flight bookings enabling customers to do more with their Amazon app and for Prime members to get more value from their membership. We are excited to partner with Cleartrip and share their passion of creating the best in class travel experiences.”

The strategic partnership comes as a shot in the arm for Cleartrip in a highly competitive OTA segment in India which is dominated by MakeMyTrip.com, Yatra.com, PayTM and others.

The post Amazonification of Flights begins in India appeared first on TravHQ.

FreeCharge, the digital payment service, has announced a new partnership with one of the leading OTAs, Cleartrip. The company claims that post this association, the travellers will be able to pay for their bookings including hotels, flights and trains using FreeCharge in under 10 seconds.

Snapdeal owned FreeCharge introduced the digital wallet last year in association with YES Bank and we have seen many other brands move in the space since then. Even Ola Cabs introduced Ola Wallet as a standalone app which earlier used to be a payment option only for the cab service.

Starting with mobile recharges and bill payments, FreeCharge has associations in 15 different sectors and this is the first time the brand has forged a partnership in travel space. Commenting on the same, FreeCharge COO, Govind Rajan said,

“After carving a mark across 15 sectors, we have now forayed into the travel space with this partnership. Cleartrip has transformed the habit of consumers online travel bookings by being a one-stop shop for all their needs. With this tie-up, FreeCharge will take this experience a step further, providing consumers with a means to complete their transactions on the-the-go, at a lightning speed. We are moving towards building an ecosystem for merchants to make consumers’ daily payments frictionless and convenient.”

The new partnership will not only help the brand give the digital wallet a boost but also help in increasing the use of FreeCharge as a payment mode for other partners with increased adoption. However, one of the strongest rivals, PayTM already works with multiple travel companies to offer their services through its platform and facilitate payments. So not only is PayTM offering wallet services to them but also working towards becoming the one stop shop for everything, including travel bookings. At this point, it appears that PayTM has the edge but it will be interesting to see how the FreeCharge-Cleartrip association plays out. It is worth a mention that Cleartrip recently associated with FreeCharge’s parent company Snapdeal to enable bookings through the e-commerce site.

Source: FirstPost

The post FreeCharge enters travel space to challenge PayTM appeared first on TravHQ.

PhocusWright India conference was a host to pioneers in travel industry discussing trends that will drive the year ahead of us. It was always one or the other discernment that got an edge above the others. Amidst all these insights, disruption in travel sector through digitization caught hold of us. It’s not just the millennials who are going bonkers with the frequency with which digital world is changing. The ecosphere is highly capricious. The travel business is and will change rapidly given these developments in digitization take a front row.

L to R: Maggie Rauch, Alex Lopukhine, Chinmai Sharma, Samyukth Sridharan

The stage was set for Maggie Rauch, Senior Research Analyst, PhocusWright Inc. to moderate the executive roundtable to discuss drifts in digitization of customer experience. The dialogue was presided over by Alex Lopukhine, Director of Business Development at Viator, Chinmai Sharma, Chief Revenue Officer, Taj Group, and Samyukth Sridharan, CEO, Cleartrip.

Key points that were core to the changing scenario in digital world when it came to customer experience were-

Consumer Psychology

The consumer is the ultimate destination when we talk about any service’s result. If it doesn’t click with the consumer, nope; it’s not working. Content consumption, whether it be hotel bookings or itinerary listings, plays a major role in keeping the customer loyal to you. Content has changed a lot for a decade now. The way it leverages digital experience for different age groups has advertently marked a dawn of a new age. Content is a much-understated space per se. But the stickiness of consumers is going to scale only if the content is used to its full potential.

Iterating the product

Since the technology is fluctuating at a faster pace than imagined, it’s imperative that the products also keep shifting in their functions. A static product will not deliver the required customer experience or for that matter even grab the attention of the consumer. OTAs are creating a wave by encouraging the suppliers to deploy technology in their product and services for a better consumer experience. Smart hotels are making a way for the travellers to skip the front desk and add value to the lifecycle of the traveller.

Smartphone as a key player

Statistically speaking, 70% of the digital activity happens on our handheld devices. Be it searching for the hotels to taking advice on local touring, anything and everything materializes on our mobiles. This dynamic data helps to build a persona around the consumer so that he starts to feel that he has a full control in choosing what he wants to. This intelligible solution draws 60% repeated purchases. And these purchases establish loyalty database.

Messaging apps and AIs in travel industry

These services are providing a personal touch to the customer experience. As consumers, everyone wants that things should be taken care of in advance. They don’t even want to pick up the phone. Personalisation escalates better feedbacks. Messaging apps and AIs are taking concierge services and room keeping to a different level.

Opportunities for a better customer experience

The industry could use more mobile content production and more evolved products to elevate customer experience in the travel sector. The content always creates a wow factor and that extra jazz everybody is looking for.

For more such takeaways from PhocusWright India Conference keep yourself tuned in here.

The post How digitization in travel will boost customer experience beyond booking appeared first on TravHQ.

Earlier today Snapdeal announced integrating inventories for redBus, Zomato and Cleartrip on its mobile app. This will enable the users to book bus tickets, hotels, flight tickets and order food directly from the application. Snapdeal primarily focuses on E-Commerce and is lining up various segments to expand its reaches.The E-Commerce giant has taken this step as a measure to expand its footprint amongst travellers.

This association gives Cleartrip, Zomato and redBus access to Snapdeal’s user base. The Snapdeal app has a large number of downloads on Google Play Store and with this move, the partner brands will be able to reach those users while saving on ad spends. The travel portals tend to this move to be positive as it provides them an extra booking channel on the run. In return, Snapdeal will earn a commission on each booking made through its platform. Air ticket is a gross merchandise value (GMV) category while food ordering is a high-frequency category. This move will create a lot of traction on the app, as for all the participants; they will have a real-time customer base. Moreover with the kind of offers Snapdeal rolls out, the travel industry is going to be taken by storm if ever they decide to include these players in the discount segment.

Snapdeal rival, Paytm, is also building a travel marketplace on its platform. The Alibaba-backed company had started selling hotels and bus tickets on the platform a few months back.

This is a highly anticipated step in breaking barriers and going that ‘extra mile’ with redBus, Cleartrip and Zomato.

Source: Economic Times.

The post Snapdeal opens up its mobile app for redBus, Cleartrip and Zomato appeared first on TravHQ.

Ixigo, a travel company headquartered in Gurgaon – India, has recently announced the launch of ixibook. This platform will allow travellers to make bookings for flights and hotels within the mobile app without being redirected to a third-party website or app. To make this a reality, the company has collaborated with the leading brands like Cleartrip and OYO Rooms.

ixibook is already operational at this moment. It enables the users of the mobile application to book flights and tickets in just one click. The idea behind creating this platform was not only to enable direct in-app booking but also to save a traveller’s time by diminishing the conversation funnel. For the convenience of the travellers, ixibook stores the user’s information. This data will be protected with 256-bit security. All subsequent financial transactions can be done without inserting the same information time and again. Also, post-booking customer support will be handled directly by the respective partner.

Commenting on the launch, Aloke Bajpai, co-­founder & CEO of ixigo, said:

“This is a first of its kind innovation in the Indian travel market, and we have chosen to work with the industry’s best for our initial launch. With ixibook, we will deliver a much smoother customer experience for ixigoers and enhance conversions for our partners by allowing users to book with them natively within our app. We expect to move over 30% of our flight and hotel bookings to ixibook within the next few months, as well as add more partners to ixibook later this year.”

Sharing his perspective, Stuart Crighton, CEO of Cleartrip, quoted:

“We’re excited to partner with ixigo on this first-of-its-kind paradigm where an online travel agency and meta-search collaborate closely to create a better user experience, something that we both value immensely.”

Ritesh Agarwal, CEO of OYO Rooms, added:

“ixigo possesses deep insights into traveller-behaviour and a rich content focus. Through this collaboration, their audience will find value in our offerings and we will be able to expand our reach to engage leisure travel enthusiasts.”

By this development, ixigo is attempting to become a more vertically integrated player. With the launch of this product, it might be successful in increasing its customer base and obtaining higher profits.

Currently, ixibook is available via Google Play Store only.

The post ixigo launches ixibook, partners with Cleartrip and OYO Rooms appeared first on TravHQ.

Travelling wisely is essential when you have a limited budget and many interesting destinations to explore. While travelling by flights or cars can be a costly affair, buses can be a good option. They are cheap and there are innumerable online bus booking services.

There are many websites that provide affordable services for an excellent bus travelling experience within India. For your convenience, we have listed few online portals that might be of use to you sometime soon.

#1 Goibibo

Being voted as the ‘Best Website’ in Leisure and Travel category by Website of the Year in 2015, Goibibo is considered to be one of the top 3 online travel aggregators in India. If you are planning to travel by bus to a nearby Indian city, Goibibo can be a good option. By booking buses from this website, you can get free shopping vouchers worth Rs. 5000. You will receive the vouchers on the registered e-mail id immediately after the transaction which can be used for booking hotels, online shopping and dining.

#2 Travelyaari

With the network of over 2,100 bus operators and 1,50,000 bus options per day, Travelyaari is one of the leading online bus booking portals of the country. The brand claims that it doesn’t charge any amount as booking fees. You will have to pay the bus ticket price only. Interestingly, Travelyaari maintains a unique online booking system that ensures the safety of solo female travellers. The female travellers have the liberty to book a seat beside women during the course of the journey.

#3 eTravelSmart

eTravelSmart is an intuitive online bus booking portal that enables you to reach your favourite destinations with absolute comfort and ease. While it has ordinary filters like ticket fares, boarding points, types of buses and dropping points, it features ‘smart’ filters like Block My Seat, Travel Recharge, Name on Seat and Seat Availability Calendar. You can use these features to make travel planning a simpler process.

#4 Cleartrip

Cleartrip is one of the popular travel aggregators used by thousands of users every day. Other than services for hotels, flights and trains, it provides bus service too. Many times you plan to travel by volvos for a more convenient ride, Observing this trend among travellers, the website has a category like Volvo Smart Tab that displays only the volvo bus services running between any two destinations. Also, it has a Recommended Smart Tab that displays the top 15 bus services according to a reliable algorithm. This will allow you to make a smarter choice for booking the apt seat for yourself.

#5 AbhiBus

With ticket inventory from 2000 operators and 50,000 routes, AbhiBus provides many buses for many popular cities like Delhi, Jaipur, Bangalore and Mumbai. Booking buses through it is much easier as it has a user-friendly interface. You just need to enter the general details of the journey you plan to take and you will be guided to the best bus services available then. Also, you can book your bus tickets at the last minute through its mobile app. If you are from Andra Pradesh, you can book APSRTC buses through it within seconds.

How many of the online bus booking portals above have you used for your travel till date?

The post Enjoy your travel at cheaper rates through these online bus booking services appeared first on TravHQ.

Yesterday, I received a promo-emailer from Goibibo, one of the leading B2C travel aggregators of India. The email was apparently sent to all Goibibo users like me and had factoids on the astounding growth of Goibibo as India’s largest hotel booking platform. The Gurgaon based travel aggregator states that the research has been conducted by Morgan Stanley and also claims that on the business side, its platform inGoibibo has the largest usage among hoteliers.

For many observers in travel industry, this growth might come across on expected lines as Goibibo has been heavily incentivising its users with huge cashback offers including goCash resulting in overall increase in traction across hotels.

But is there a catch somewhere?

The data by Goibibo is in stark contrast to a recent report on Indian hotel bookings by research agency, Millward Brown. According to their report, MakeMyTrip leads the OTA hotel booking segment with close to 25% market share followed by Goibibo with 18.9%. The report adds that MakeMyTrip currently has 27,500 hotels and guesthouses in India and 255,000 hotels outside India listed on its platform.

MakeMyTrip which had recently received US$180 million in investment from China’s leading travel agency Ctrip.com states that funds will go towards aggressively increasing its market share in the online hotel booking space from 25% to 50% in the next 3 years.

Switching back to the research by Morgan Stanley, the graph below shows that the online bookings are inclined in favour of Goibibo across the metro & non-metro clusters. Even in tourist hubs Goibibo’s growth graph peaks compared to its competitors.

Morgan Stanley’s research paints a different representation of the % hotel volume share among OTAs.

Goibibo’s incremental share of bookings is also the highest among all OTAs:

TravHQ Take: The opportunity is huge for an extremely under-penetrated online hotel booking segment in India which currently stands at 25% of which OTAs only account for approximately 19% share. With significantly higher percentage margins compared to online air tickets and the power to run discounts, the hotel booking segment continues to be a lucrative one for all players irrespective of who really owns the largest pie. With PayTM’s expected entry in the travel market place, 2016 certainly promises to be an exciting year for India’s online travel industry.

The post The curious case of which Indian OTA owns the hotel booking pie appeared first on TravHQ.

Apple took its own sweet time in bringing the Apple Watch to India and by the time it was officially launched, many enthusiasts had already brought the device from other countries. Now that the device is officially here, there will be more users adopting the wearable. Even before it came in, some Indian travel brands were ready with their Apple watch apps so that they are ready when the users are. Whether you have recently bought one or have been using the Apple Watch for months, here are five apps that you need to have on your Apple Watch when you travel:

#1. Uber

This one is a no brainer. Once at your destination, you will have to travel locally and that is when nothing is able to match Uber. Of course there are local cab options everywhere but then you can’t always count on them to be reliable. Using the Uber Apple Watch app, you can request a ride and get notified once your cab arrives. In order to keep it simple, some features like uberPOOL and Split Fare aren’t available which is fair considering the use case of Apple Watch.

#2. TripCase

If you like to plan everything before you head out on a trip, it is very likely that you use a trip planning or itinerary management app. TripCase is one of the best tools you can pick to manage your travel and its Apple Watch app complements the mobile app very well. It shows the upcoming trips on the watch display. It also offers the option to access the TripTime widget on the watch.

#3. TripAdvisor

Another one that goes without saying. You don’t have to look any further than TripAdvisor for reviews about places. Using location data, the glance screen can quickly offer nearby recommendation. It considers the time of day while recommending places so at lunch time, it will recommend restaurants near you. The app also offers walking directions without you having to pull out your phone all the time.

#4. Cleartrip

If we talk about Indian OTAs, Cleartrip was the first one to come up with Apple Watch app. They have always been at the forefront when it comes to adopting new technologies, be it a mobile website or a mobile app. The Cleartrip Apple watch app shows you a short list of your upcoming flights and in the last 24 hours of your trip, the glance screen shows the flight details including flight number, status and departure time.

#5. Wunderlist

Travelling for leisure or business, there are always a dozen things to take care of before you leave for your trip. An itinerary planning app will only help you plan your trip but Wunderlist will remind you to pick the backpack you let your friend borrow or to book a cab to airport. It will help you manage your agenda and easily check items off the to-do list. The glance screen offers a quick view of your day ahead when you are travelling making it a good companion for your trip.

What other Apple Watch apps you use while travelling? Do share with us. You can read our experience of using the Apple Watch here.

The post Here are the five apps every traveller needs on his Apple Watch appeared first on TravHQ.

TripAdvisor has been testing the instant booking feature for a while now and rolled out the feature across all platforms in US and UK earlier this month. They have partnered with various hotels and booking platforms to add the option of booking a hotel without leaving the TripAdvisor website. So travellers now get a prominent book button to book through TripAdvisor only. With the rollout in US & UK done, they will be introducing this feature in other countries as well, including India.

From “enabling travellers to plan the perfect trip” to “enabling travellers to plan and book the perfect trip”, the shift could cause some stir in the already competitive market. Hotel booking industry is growing very fast and OTAs like MakeMyTrip and Cleartrip have posted impressive growth in first quarter of this financial year. TripAdvisor doesn’t want to be left out. Operating as a metasearch website, TripAdvisor was generating revenues with its cost per click model so far. With instant booking system in place, they are now adding the commission model as well.

How is it different from OTAs

While people come to TripAdvisor for reviews, a good fraction of the visitors head to OTAs for bookings. With Instant Booking, they are trying to set up a middle ground between OTAs and metasearch. TripAdvisor has been partnering with individual properties as well as distribution platforms to offer Instant Booking on TripAdvisor. Unlike OTAs, even with the option to book, they will continue to work as metasearch and list prices from OTAs, only with the direct booking button being more visible. Hotels might see an advantage here as the Cost Per Action structure means they pay for a stay rather than just driving a user to website as was the case with CPC structure.

A bumpy journey?

According to SimilarWeb, TripAdvisor is the third most popular travel/tourism website in India (if we ignore IRCTC) after MakeMyTrip and Cleartrip. They already have a strong network with hotels and a large number of users who trust them for review. According to them, users will have more confidence in booking on TripAdvisor as compared to some other platform due to this trust. Hotels will also appreciate the idea of a new player in the space as it might result in OTAs getting more aggressive in a bid to lure more hoteliers.

However it won’t be all easy sailing for TripAdvisor. Expedia and Priceline are two major players who have decided to stay away from this new service. We might see something similar in India because of the lack of brand attribution. TripAdvisor might consider offering different CPA rates to them as compared to others to get them on-board but at this point, it seems that major OTAs will create some friction. It is pretty obvious considering the fact that OTAs won’t make as much money and as they aren’t getting brand attribution, the same customers won’t come back to their brand website.

At this point we are speculating on what will change when they introduce the Instant Booking feature in India but it will surely turn up the heat in this segment. OTAs were already in crosshairs with Google introducing the direct booking feature in some parts of the world. TripAdvisor was facing tough competition from new startups as well as established OTAs so this move was required to stay strong. Indian market is very different from markets like US & UK and we might see TripAdvisor doing things a little differently here.

The post OTAs in India beware, TripAdvisor instant booking is here appeared first on TravHQ.

Cleartrip, the online travel service provider, is aiming 60% increase in hotel booking transactions. It has challenged its competitors by claiming that such transactions will double annually over the next few years. The online travel service provider functions in two major segments: Air Booking and Hotels. According to the company, 25000 transactions take place daily on their website leading to sales transactions of around $800 million per annum.

According to the report, Cleartrip President and Chief Operating Officer, Samyukth Sridharan stated that the hotel side has “such large potential that it would continue to grow at 100% for the next few years at least”. On the other side, the aviation side of the brand is expected to increase by 40% in the near future.

Although the growth of recently launched ‘Activities’ segment remains unclear, the company expects it to contribute around 15% of the total transactions in the coming years.

Cleartrip was launched in July, 2006 by Stuart Crighton & Hrush Bhatt. Competing with OTAs such as MakeMyTrip, Goibibo and Yatra, it caters to the needs of the Indian travellers through its website and mobile application.

The post Cleartrip aspires 60% jump in transactions, challenges the hotel booking industry appeared first on TravHQ.